Landing a PR Internship: Getting an Interview [PART 1]

Many students will be graduating in the coming weeks and months, and entering the workforce full-time, for the first-time. Some will be fortunate enough to land a permanent position, while many will go down the internship route. We all know the graduate job market is increasingly competitive (and much improved in recent years), but what can you do to land an internship and get your foot in the door at a PR agency?

This is part one of three of a guest post from Chloe Parker at Cherish PR which explores this topic in detail. Cherish PR is an independent west-London based agency “at the heart of the digital economy.”

Landing a PR internship
We are always on the look-out for a brilliant intern at Cherish PR; someone who’s hard-working, willing to get stuck-in, and committed to showing us why they’d be a great asset to our team. In exchange, we believe we offer a great environment for interns to thrive, learn about PR from the bottom-up and go on to secure that first role in PR. Almost every employee here has been an intern at one point or another, in fact I started as an intern back in 2012 and am now a Junior PR Consultant for Cherish.

Although we’ve had some fantastic interns, we’ve also had a mountain of generally un-inspiring CVs and covering letters and a few less than impressive interns. So, we thought we’d put together a guide on the best way to land that internship and how to approach your time with the company.

Step 1: getting an interview
Be proactive…in most cases agencies will not advertise for interns, they will choose someone from the pool of prospective CVs they’ve already received. So, even if an agency doesn’t look like it has an intern programme, give them a call, ask who it would be best to send a CV to, and email it over.

Your CV and covering letter are going to be key in getting you invited to interview, so please make sure you do yourself justice.

Neaten and tighten-up your CV. Don’t waffle and keep it relevant to the company you’re applying to. On the flip side, if your CV only consists on a few bullet points and shows none of your personality, that won’t do you much good either.

Make sure you’ve researched the company you would like to intern at, and mention why that company caught your eye – why would you make the perfect intern for this company, and what you looking to gain from the experience. Then follow the first rule of PR…pick up the phone! Speaking to someone in person rather than via email should heighten your chances of making a good impression and being asked to interview.

This is just an example of how you can use free tools to help stand YOU apart from the competition (and how it helped me get my internship here at Cherish):

About the Author

Ben Cotton - Marketing Manager with a passion for inbound at HubSpot, Founder of Growth Hack Talks, Blogger at Ben-Cotton.com and Chief Quaffer at CraftySwine.org .